The arts and culture present some serious funding challenges for society and represent some serious inequities.
Production:
- The top of the pyramids, like the directors of museums or the owners of galleries, make much more money than those starting out.
- Many people cannot afford to work in the arts because of the low salaries.
- Therefore, arts and culture often draw from upper middle class and upper-class sectors for staffing.
Consumption:
- Donors give more money than the average customer.
- However, donors and other upper middle class/ upper-class disproportionately consume the arts.
- Arts and Culture are often too expensive for the middle class and lower middle class.
- Institutions serve more people than they employ, meaning that while there isn’t large “profit, there is increased engagement.
So what? Well, it means that when arts and culture have inequity in their means of production, the public will question our costs. Art, for example, is a commodity. People know that works can cost millions of dollar. When museums suggest they need money to support their operations, this doesn’t compute.
Arts and culture are extremely costly to produce. Think of all of the people who need to paint sets for Broadway show, and this is not work that can be automated. And, while people might enjoy that show, they can’t see how the cost of painting that set goes into the ticket fee. They just see that they will be spending $200 of their hard earned money for a 2-hour show, for example. You don’t realize that your ticket is not even close to covering that set painter; the corporate donations are part of this. Obscuring the cost of production means that consumers don’t understand the importance of their contributions.
The inequity on the production side also has major problems. Arts and culture of all kinds have expanded drastically. The required contribution from consumers has increased to cover these costs. But, finally, the perceived value of these experiences has not necessarily increased. There is more and more competition for the same consumers, just as they are less likely to go to events. In other words, organizations now cost more while often getting fewer consumers. Arts and Culture need to make more to cover their higher costs but people are not necessarily more likely to spend it. Finally, the opt-in fee to start using arts and culture prices out people, meaning that a whole generation of potential future clients might miss out.
The inequities in our funding of arts and culture can have massive ramifications on the number of future consumers potentially rotting the future of the sector.
This post follows up a post about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new mandatory ticket fees: Nickles, Dimes, and Tough Times : The Relationship between Visitors, Revenue, and Value